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Woj reporting on twitter that the Maloofs are on the verge of selling the Kings for $500 million to a Hansen-Ballmer-led Seattle group, which would play in Key Arena for two years before moving into a new arena.

I thought 304 was a sarcastic response to 301 until 308 showed up. I just figured RAPN was a Spurs blog I had never heard of and David Robinsonis was a play on David Robinson+Sabonis as a measuring stick for the new Spurs signee.

think jon meant rapm - regularized adjusted plus minus. tracked at stats-for-the-nba.appspot.com - a smarter, better version of +/- that sometimes yields crazy results.
if so, i thought it was really high on jordan.

I would think that a hypothetical David Robinsonis would undoubtedly have been the greatest player in NBA history. So would a Magic Russell. Or LeBron Chamberlain. Or Joakim Price (plus - imagine what his painting would look like!).

Then again, he's certainly qualified. I do think there may be a conflict of interest here though.

i don't see that at all. it's actually essentially the same situation. the team is for sale because the arena is #### and the city/state won't pay for a new one (which is a fairly legitimate stance, imo), while the purchaser is buying the team with the specific intention of moving them.

i mean, it does kind of reek of the fox being in charge of the hen house, but that's what sports business is these days.

i don't see that at all. it's actually essentially the same situation. the team is for sale because the arena is #### and the city/state won't pay for a new one (which is a fairly legitimate stance, imo), while the purchaser is buying the team with the specific intention of moving them.

The Sonics would not have been sold to Bennet if he expressed a specific intent to move them. That was the basis of the the court case against him (ie- were his efforts to work with the city fraudulent).

I suppose I can stop being bitter now. On the other hand, I have to start rooting for Cousins and Evans instead of just hoping they do weird stuff.

The Sonics would not have been sold to Bennet if he expressed a specific intent to move them. That was the basis of the the court case against him (ie- were his efforts to work with the city fraudulent).

I suppose I can stop being bitter now

If it were my team that'd gotten moved, I would never, ever stop hating the owner to stole them away. Never. I'd be okay if Bennet never got anything other than bile from the people of Seattle for the rest of his life.

I understand the hatred of Bennet, and I do think he is a dishonest person, but the Sonics weren't MY team since I grew up with Minnesota and moved to Seattle while they were in the process of packing up. I am going to treat the Sonics like I do the Mariners- they are #2 behind the Twins and Timberwolves.

On the other hand, could this be a possible good thing? The Wolves have Pek and Love and some guards, but they could use a wing scorer. If they fade away a bit, that gives them a nice lotto pick in their arsenal for next year, right?

I'd be okay if Bennet never got anything other than bile from the people of Seattle for the rest of his life.

I'd say Bennett deserves every bit of vitriol Seattle fans want to throw at him, with Stern close behind. That being said, if Stern is going to allow Seattle to "steal" the Kings from Sacramento, a podunk city/town that nonetheless supported the hell out of their mostly horrible team for 20 years, just to make up for the fact that he allowed one of his best friends to steal the Sonics from Seattle in the first place then he's doubly a dick.

Woj reporting on twitter that the Maloofs are on the verge of selling the Kings for $500 million to a Hansen-Ballmer-led Seattle group, which would play in Key Arena for two years before moving into a new arena.

On the other hand, could this be a possible good thing? The Wolves have Pek and Love and some guards, but they could use a wing scorer. If they fade away a bit, that gives them a nice lotto pick in their arsenal for next year, right?

Posssible upsides to this trainwreck of a wolves season:
* Better draft pick
* The rest of the team develops as much as possible and continues growing and developing (since they are a young team), especially...
* D Williams has even more chance to develop into something that was worth the second pick overall. Becoming valuable, at least in trade, is the upside (downside is at least they know he never will and move on).
* Expectations in MN are tempered to a more realistic level. At the start of the season it was a bit over the top and this should reset things, so that maybe we can be pleasantly surprised going forward.

But overall it is a disappointing year, because injuries suck and the most important thing this team needed is for Love and Rubio to click, to grow together and to have all the other pieces grow and learn around them. I think they may have all the parts to build a good team, but we will never know if they can't be healthy and play together.

Williams is playing pretty well right now. He is putting up the same per game numbers (so people think he hasn't progressed) but he is playing 4 fewer MPG. His PER is up from 12.9 to 16.1 and his WS/48 has doubled from his rookie year by virtue of better rebounding and shooting that went from very bad to OK. He is also stretching the floor better on offense (39% 3's, good on longer twos). Since Love got hurt, he is averaging 13-5 with 50% shooting in 20 MPG. He still has defensive limitations as a SF, has trouble finishing at the rim, and is overly passive sometimes in offense, seemingly because he doesn't always know what to do. Still, he looks a lot better to me so far this year. A big part of it is the ability to cross-match the forward sports with Cunningham (and AK at times). My favorite Williams moment of the year was last night when he beat Serge Ibaka on a jump ball.

Also, Love and Rubio have been on the court together for 28 minutes this year.

I have Minnesota on League Pass this year, and they are decent even without Rubio and Love. But I think at this point, Utah has the inside track on the 8th spot. Minnesota may be very good next year, though.

As to the Dirk/Dwight thing, the Lakers would be:

1. Adding another guy in his 30s with health and defensive issues, who is currently sporting a 14.9 PER.
2. Handing Howard, their only good defender, to Mark Cuban, whom 99% of Lakers fans loathe.

I assume that Cuban would pull the trigger on it, but he may also figure that if he waits, Howard is bailing on the Lakers anyway. I also assume that Dirk has some kind of NTC, although he might agree to it since Nash is here. If it actually got to the talking stages, the Lakers would probably want either Mayo or Collison coming along with Nowitzki, in exchange for Meeks or Blake/Duhon. D'Antoni would also want to ask about his old SSOL stalwart Shawn Marion.

I would actually say the opposite and see Dallas saying no. Besides the personal ties Dirk has to the franchise/Cuban, why would Cuban trade for (a not healthy) Howard without a guarantee of him staying, especially in a season that's going nowhere?

why would Cuban trade for (a not healthy) Howard without a guarantee of him staying, especially in a season that's going nowhere?

Because it puts him in the driver's seat for getting Howard in the off-season, which is what he wants to do anyway. As it stands now, he can't offer Howard as much money as the Lakers can. Also, Dirk has been outspoken the last week or so about his unhappiness with the team in Dallas and Howard, banged up though he is, is seven years younger than Nowitzki is. They are "going nowhere" with the team they have now, as Nowitzki himself has said in the media, and Nowitzki's deal ends next year, so they may be thinking about dealing him in any case.

Like I said, Cuban might not do it, and I don't think it will happen, but I think Cuban and Nelson would be more likely to trigger on it than Buss and Kupchak would. Howard's rep is in tatters and his career is in a bad patch, and his back may prevent him from ever being what he was. But he is still a guy that you try to get if you have a chance. Put it this way: he is a lot more likely than Nowitzki is to be the best player on a Finals team over the next four years.

Yeah, I'm mostly with robin (and was thinking partly of Dirk's recent comments). Though it's also possible both teams would say no. Cuban may still be committed to trying to pair Howard and Dirk, rather than swap one for the other.

Also, is it just me or has there been strikingly little discussion of the Heat, here and elsewhere? I guess it makes sense, given that their preeminence in the East is mostly undisputed, there's been little or no drama around the team, they have nothing to prove, and they're playing roughly to expectations.

Also, is it just me or has there been strikingly little discussion of the Heat, here and elsewhere? I guess it makes sense, given that their preeminence in the East is mostly undisputed, there's been little or no drama around the team, they have nothing to prove, and they're playing roughly to expectations.

Anyway, they're only 5-5 over their last 10 games, FWIW.

You summed it up in your first paragraph. Unless they have injuries or some unforeseen breakdown of some sort, they'll almost certainly win the East. A 5-5 stretch in what are basically the doldrums of the season (Christmas through February) just says to me they're conserving energy or not as focused as they could be, while often getting other team's best efforts.

PJ might be right about Cuban not doing it, but the 2011 team is far in the rearview in Dallas--Chandler, Kidd, Terry, Barea--all gone. And obviously, while there would be no guarantee, Cuban is smart; he wouldn't trigger unless he was pretty damn sure Howard was staying.

From the Lakers' POV, it is a loser for basketball reasons. Even with the all the problems, the Lakers ORTG is 6th in the NBA and about the same as it was in 2010. It is the D, which is 22nd and dropping, that is killing them.

And Joe and PJ are right about Miami. My predictions usually suck, but I did say that I thought Miami would have regular-season stretches in which they were going at about 75% and would lose a fair number of games for a team with their core. They do have a few weaknesses, but I think that is mostly what is happening.

On that Laker trade, I think guys like us in a strato-type league would be more likely to do that trade because I think you can make a case for it on paper (even though robin is right, it would gut an already questionable defense). The real hangups would be the emotional ones- Dirk's ties to the city, his friendship with Cuban, and even LA.s long pursuit of Dwight vs. the short time of the on-court experiment. Another thought is that Vince might be useful in the short term for LA too. They're already "old as ####\" and he would help with the court spacing and has played at the three in some lineups.

I watched Dallas play the Kings last night. We talk about Dallas now and then, but here are some things I noticed about the Kings:

1. They are notably bad at playing active team defense. They work hard running around teams and generally play sound defense on the ball, but they are extremely late on rotations and especially cutting off drivers or guys rolling to the basket. It resulted in tons of fouls as they got to a guy just as he got to the rim with the ball.

2. Tyreke looked a lot better than the last few times I have seen him play. That explosion that allowed him to get to the basket whenever he wanted was there for most of the game. He is coming off of a knee injury so he is not at 100%, and I do not think he will ever be a #1 option if he does not improve his midrange or three point shooting (especially against opponents who are better at protecting the paint). Still, he scored about 20 points very efficiently and was one of the few guys who seemed to be at least marginally aware that his movement could help get his teammates open.

3. Cousins is a great offensive option but like many young bigs, needs to learn to pass out of the double team. There was one play where Collison switched on him and Dirk came to help so he just went through both of them, but there were at least 2 other instances where he was doubled and turned the ball over. I think he will learn. Some of the problem is that he has so many black holes around him. I really cannot see what Salmons and Garcia are giving them. Thomas is an ok sparkplug (no coincidence that he grew up in the same general area as Jason Terry, Jamal Crawford, and Nate Robinson) who is miscast as a starting PG. Really, the team's far and away top need is a distributing PG (also need more shooting- which could be partially addressed by reallocating some minutes- and a little more of a defensive presence in the middle unless Hayes/ Thompson plays better). If they drafted Lillard instead of Robinson, they would be better than Portland right now.

4. I think they are having trouble selling ads on their TV network because almost every commercial break would have the same 2-3 advertisers and many of them would double up on ads during the same break. They must have had 30 Pizza Guys commercials with Thomas in them during the game. The announcer even said "now there is a pizza guy who really delivers!" after one of his baskets.

5. As far as game flow, the Kings were up most of the game, but ran into a stretch in the fourth quarter where they went from up about 10 to down 4 through a lot of dead-end possessions and bad turnovers (again, lack of a real PG). Smart responded by playing a strange lineup of Thomas, Fredette, Thornton, Evans, and Cousins. Carlisle countered with Collison, Beaubois, Mayo, Carter, and DIrk. Dirk is still very out of sync. The Kings pushed the game into OT with that lineup when Thomas banked in a three to tie it in the last 10 seconds. They ultimately lost when Cousins fouled out when he and Carter got tangled on a loose ball and he kind of gave him a forearm shiver. It was a very weird play becaues it simultaneously looked like there was no way you could throw that type of forearm at a guy unintentiionally, but it also looked like he did not totally mean to do it. As soon as he made contact, he was trying to help Vince so he didn't fall down. The refs reviewed it and made it a flagrant 2, which was defensible. Sacto struggled to score from there and lost.

It was a very weird play becaues it simultaneously looked like there was no way you could throw that type of forearm at a guy unintentiionally, but it also looked like he did not totally mean to do it. As soon as he made contact, he was trying to help Vince so he didn't fall down.

I interpreted that as Cousins thinking, in the immortal words of Ron Burgandy, "I immediately regret this decision."

from another thread - loads of college basketball stat scans have been added to bb-ref.
prompted by the lofton thread, i looked at a pair of senior power forwards: dave winfield, who walked on to the minnesota club (10.5 pts, 6.1 reb, as a lunch pail guy) and tony clark (11.6 pts, 4.6 reb - kind of a disappointing stretch four) for san diego st.

I'd say Bennett deserves every bit of vitriol Seattle fans want to throw at him, with Stern close behind. That being said, if Stern is going to allow Seattle to "steal" the Kings from Sacramento, a podunk city/town that nonetheless supported the hell out of their mostly horrible team for 20 years, just to make up for the fact that he allowed one of his best friends to steal the Sonics from Seattle in the first place then he's doubly a dick.

Stern is a dick, but part of his job is to make sure that all members of his league are in the best situation for them possible. Moving from Sacramento to Seattle is a good move regardless of the reason.

And on that note, moving from Seattle to OK city is still a bad decision no matter the reason.

But really though, if there's a city that the Kings should have moved to, it probably should have been San Francisco. The Warriors belong to Oakland, not San Francisco. Everyone in SF is just bandwagoning. :)

Following up on my case for Sullinger upthread: He has 14 points, 8 rebounds (4 offensive) and an assist in 16 first-half minutes so far against Houston. FWIW (maybe not much), he leads the Celtics in unadjusted +/- on the season (Garnett is second).

Ha, and I was just in my head trying to figure out the likelihood of the Knicks and Bulls matching up. I know the Bulls are a good team, but they have ##### slapped the Knicks two games in a row at the Garden. Right now the Bulls are the 5 seed; but t hey could beat Indy out for the division and this could be a second round possibility.

They will look better with Felton back and healthy, but then again, I'm pretty sure the Bulls have a PG coming back as well...

The Lakers have had a pace of 100 or more possessions in each of their past four games -– all losses, of course. The Lakers now have a 7-16 record this season in games with a pace of at least 96 possessions, but they’re 8-5 when the pace is 95 or slower.

"I told Dirk we're not going to trade him. He was happy. I think," Cuban said, laughing. "I wanted to make it clear to him. I said, 'We're in this through thick and thin,' and so there's no way I would trade him, no matter what."

The Warriors belong to Oakland, not San Francisco. Everyone in SF is just bandwagoning. :)

This is very much true. The Warriors are entirely an East Bay team. I was very surprised to hear they were moving to SF as they have zero presence there and essentially literally zero fanbase. I would guess a large portion of SF isn't even aware the Warriors exist. Of course if the Kings moved there they would immediately sign a huge TV deal and become the toast of the town provided they won a few games.

Along the lines of the SF move, there's this article (probably posted before). For those not familiar with the city, Pier 32 is much closer to downtown than the Pier 50 site the Giants are pushing. Everyone traveling there would have to drive because it's not close to BART or Muni (Pier 32 is), which makes the Giants's proclaimed primary concern (traffic) doubly ridiculous, and being pushed out of the downtown area would also reduce the team to secondary status (clearly this is not an outcome that would disappoint the Giants). Geographically it's also in a much worse area in terms of restaurants and bars and the like and doesn't have the proximity to downtown/transportation or the layout for those kinds are places to spring up around the stadium as they did with Pac Bell. Basically the Giants, despite being gifted huge sums of land and allowed to do pretty much whatever they want with it, don't feel anyone else should be allowed the same bounty.

I was very surprised to hear they were moving to SF as they have zero presence there and essentially literally zero fanbase. I would guess a large portion of SF isn't even aware the Warriors exist.

I don't understand how you came to this conclusion. Sure, they are definitely a distant third after the Giants and Niners, but when I go to any number of local dives the Warriors are absolutely always on the TV, and there are always people watching (and these are definitely not sports bars). The game on Friday against Portland seemingly half of the bar was agonizing over the second half collapse. I see the same amount of support in Oakland...it's not like you head over to Oakland and suddenly everyone you see is in Warriors gear talking about the Run TMC days.

I don't understand how you came to this conclusion. Sure, they are definitely a distant third after the Giants and Niners, but when I go to any number of local dives the Warriors are absolutely always on the TV, and there are always people watching (and these are definitely not sports bars).

Well then this I'm glad to hear. I haven't seen a bunch of Warriors fanship in San Francisco (granted I don't live in San Francisco anymore, but when I'm there it doesn't seem to have changed THAT much) but if there is, great. I think we can all agree though that the very great majority of Warriors fanship exists in the East Bay - because the Warriors are there of course, but regardless. And I do understand obviously why the Warriors would want to move to SF - for the same reason the A's want to move to San Jose, because they'll gain much greater access to corporate sponsorship and draw from a much more affluent fanbase. The benefit of an SF move as compared to a San Jose one, especially if they get that Pier 30-32 spot near BART, would at least be that they would still be accessible to the East Bay so all the po' folk could still attend games. Until they get priced out.

I think I'm just a little sad that Oakland, while I grew up having the A's, Warriors, and then the Raiders after they returned, could very conceivably within the next 5 years have none of those teams. A small non-wealthy city like Oakland was lucky to have all those teams in the first place, but still.

I definitely agree with that. The Warriors moving to SF will bring in an entirely different type of "fan," just like the Giants moving from Candlestick to AT&T did. It will probably be the same people...the ones that spend 3/4 of the game taking pictures of themselves at the game and putting them on their Facebook account and then obsessively checking to see if anyone has commented on them.

Bulls are now only 10-10 at home after the Suns curbstomped them Saturday. They are maddeningly inconsistent, and the only way to describe it is the old cliche about playing to the level of their competition. Inconsistency is a very unsettling thing for a Thibs team.

I definitely agree with that. The Warriors moving to SF will bring in an entirely different type of "fan," just like the Giants moving from Candlestick to AT&T did. It will probably be the same people...the ones that spend 3/4 of the game taking pictures of themselves at the game and putting them on their Facebook account and then obsessively checking to see if anyone has commented on them.

The East Bay has been a GREAT home for the NBA but, like Seattle, the NBA isn't sentimental. That's what the East Bay gets for supporting one of America's worst run teams of the last 30 years so well...